Hostel redevelopment programme of the Kagiso Hostel in the Mogale City Local Municipality

Abstract

Hostels are a product of the migrant labour system that originated in the copper mining industry in Namaqualand in the 1850s. The migrant labour compounds were used to accommodate migrant labour workers in the urban areas. However, these compounds also meant that migrant labour workers were denied the right of access to permanent accommodation and residential space in the urban areas. After the repeal of the influx control and segregative laws in South Africa in 1986, some of the hostel dwellers brought their relatives and friends to live in the hostels and this resulted in problems such as overcrowding which were exacerbated by poor management and control of the hostels. The living conditions of the hostel dwellers deteriorated during the 1990s. After the announcement of the unbanning of all liberation movements and political parties in South Africa in the 1990s, hostel violence broke out. This hostel violence left many hostel blocks vandalised and without basic municipal services such as electricity, water and waste removal. The hostel violence was primarily between the Inkata Freedom Party (IFP) aligned hostel dwellers and the African National Congress (ANC) aligned township and informal settlement residents. The hostel violence has catalysed the public housing challenges faced by the democratic government since its inception in 1994. Nevertheless, since 1994 the democratic government has introduced various housing programmes in an effort to provide adequate houses for all South African citizens. One such housing programme is the hostel redevelopment programme. The hostel redevelopment programme was adopted by the democratic government after 1994 with the aim of, among other things, upgrading public hostels, redeveloping and converting the rooms in public hostels into family rental units in order to improve the living conditions of the hostel dwellers and introducing hostel dwellers to family life. The Mogale City Local Municipality (MCLM) is one of the municipalities in Gauteng province that is participating in the hostel redevelopment programme. The findings of this study have revealed that the upgrading of the Kagiso hostel involved the following two processes: During the first process, the MCLM upgraded the Kagiso hostel by fixing broken windows and doors, repairing toilets and providing basic municipal services such as electricity, water, and waste removal in order to improve the living conditions of the hostel dwellers. The second process involved demolishing the hostel blocks and converting them into family units in order to address the public housing challenges relevant to the Kagiso hostel. In this study, the hostel redevelopment programme is called process 1 and the community residential units (CRU) programme is called process 2.